Northern Illinois

Peter Flowers of the Geneva firm Foote, Meyers, Mielke & Flowers was installed as the 56th President of the Illinois Trial Lawyers Association in early June at its annual convention. Flowers, 41, obtained his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1989 from Loyola University and his Juris Doctor in 1992 from DePaul University.
Currently, Flowers concentrates his practice in the areas of medical malpractice, wrongful death litigation, workers' compensation, personal injury and product liability litigation. He has a special interest in the representation of children who have been injured by the neglectful conduct of medical professionals.
Flowers is a member of the American Association for Justice, Chicago Bar Association, Illinois State Bar Association (a member of the ISBA Assembly), DuPage County Bar Association and Kane County Bar Association.

We invite you to share your hard-won knowledge and maybe win $2,000 in prize money by entering the 51st Annual Lincoln Award Legal Writing Contest.
We're looking for useful, practical articles on topics important to practicing lawyers. The highest scores will go to manuscripts that Illinois lawyers can use in their practices, written in a no-nonsense, plain-English style.
If you're an ISBA lawyer member under age 36 as of July 1, 2009, or admitted to the bar fewer than five years as of that date, you're eligible to compete for a share of the $3,500 in Lincoln Award prize money and a handsome plaque for your office. And even if you don't win, yours may be among the many Lincoln Award entries to appear in the Illinois Bar Journal.
Click here for more details. Click here for contest rules and application.
And don't delay -- the deadline for filing a notice to enter the contest is July 15!

State

The Illinois Equal Justice Foundation, which advocates for and distributes the state apporpriation for civil legal aid, faces a 50 percent cut in its appropriation if the budget bill passed by the General Assembly on May 31 becomes law. The appropriation would drop from $3.5 million to $1.75 million.
In 2008, the $3.5 million appropriation helped over 68,000 low-income families address their legal needs.
The General Assembly is going into a special session on Tuesday, June 23. The IEJF asks that voters call their state senators and state representatives and tell them that legal aid is important.
Click here for more information.

By a 4-2 vote in Maddux v. Blagojevich.
Justice Freeman delivered the judgment with Chief Justice Fitzgerald and Justices Kilbride and Burke concurring.
Justices Karmeier and Garman dissented.
Justice Thomas was not part of the decision.
From the case summary:

William Maddux is the presiding judge of the law division of the Cook County circuit court. He will be 75 years old before his current term expires in 2010. He would like to serve beyond that time, but wants to do so by running for retention, rather than in a contested election.
The Illinois Constitution of 1970 states criteria for eligibility for judgeships which do not include age, but also states that the “General Assembly may provide by law for the retirement of Judges *** at a prescribed age.” The Compulsory Retirement of Judges Act states that “a judge is automatically retired at the expiration of the term in which the judge attains the age of 75.” In 1992, the Act was construed by the appellate court as precluding a judge from running for retention after age 75, but as allowing a candidate for judgeship to run in a contested election at any age, thus reaching a compromise between the constitutional absence of age as an eligibility requirement and the legislature’s constitutionally granted power to set a retirement age. This judicial interpretation, now 17 years old, has not been altered by the legislature.
This declaratory judgment action seeking summary judgment was brought as an attempt to secure for Judge Maddux the right to run for retention. It was claimed that the statutory scheme now in place is constitutionally invalid. The circuit court dismissed the action.